


Pretty Dresses

by Lapsed_Scholar



Series: Family Stories [3]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: AU, Dancing, Dresses, F/F, F/M, Family Fluff, Female Friendship, Fluff, More weddings, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Prom, Special Events, Weddings, picture day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-04
Updated: 2018-03-25
Packaged: 2019-03-26 17:38:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13862604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lapsed_Scholar/pseuds/Lapsed_Scholar
Summary: The life and times of Emily Scully, through the lens of female adornment rituals(A series of four interlocking vignettes)





	1. 1999

“I need a dress, Mommy,” says Emily, very seriously, as they’re leaving the elementary school’s aftercare. It’s a misty fall afternoon, and the leaves are just starting to turn. “A _pretty_ dress,” she adds, apparently deciding that needs to be specified.

“A pretty dress,” echoes Scully, trying to determine what merits the distinction in her daughter’s mind.

“It’s Picture Day next week,” explains Emily, still serious. “Mrs. Martin gave us forms. I want to be pretty for the picture, so I need a pretty dress.”

“You look pretty every day, sweetheart. You don’t need a special dress for that.” She’s trying to reassure, but Emily looks up at her, small face conveying disapproval, so she hurries to clarify, “But picture day _is_ a special occasion, and a special occasion does deserve a special dress.”

She’s still fairly new to this—parenting. She wonders if parents who have more experience are more prepared for these conversations, or if it’s something that you always just sort of fumble through. Right now, she is second-guessing her response, worried about the focus on her daughter’s looks. Girls and women are under so much social pressure to be pretty all the time—maybe she should have assured Emily that she didn’t _have_ to look pretty at all, if she didn’t want to. But Emily had brought up her appearance by herself, and Scully doesn’t want to squash her daughter’s self-expression.

She’s probably overthinking it. Wanting to dress up in a pretty dress is a fairly normal impulse. She, too, has been known to feel it.

* * *

They go to the mall on Saturday morning. It’s been about twenty years since Scully considered the mall a prime destination for Saturday, but, as she and Emily make their way back to the girls’ section of Kohl’s, she finds that she is perfectly content.

Emily darts around the racks of floral prints and ribbons and satin and velvet, trying to pull various dresses off the racks and chattering excitedly.

“Be patient, Emily. Show me what you like, and I’ll find your size for you,” admonishes Scully, catching her daughter’s arm before Emily can successfully yank a white-and-pink patterned dress onto the floor.

When they walk into the dressing room, Scully’s arms are laden with dresses. Emily tries them all on, Scully helping: straightening lace, tying bows, preventing hems from being stomped by eager feet. Emily scrutinizes herself carefully in the mirror wearing each one.

The dress she eventually selects is white, adorned with bright pink and purple flowers and green leaves. The fabric is slightly transparent in the light, so they head next to the lingerie department.

“Where’re we going?” asks Emily, holding her hand and traipsing along beside her.

“We need to find you a slip.”

“What’s a slip?”

“It’s another layer that girls wear under dresses sometimes, to make sure the dresses fit well and aren’t see-through.” Scully feels as though she is initiating her daughter into some sort of feminine rite.

“Whoa,” says Emily. She seems, overall, pleased at this introduction to a secret of female dressing. She is more pleased when she discovers that slips are often white and shiny and trimmed with lace.

* * *

Emily models the dress (and the slip), with a great deal of excited delight, for Mulder when he comes over that afternoon.

“Em, I think that’s supposed to stay _under_ the dress,” says Mulder, gently, though Scully can tell that he’s amused.

“But it’s pretty! Look at the lace!” says Emily, then smooths down the hem of the dress and gives him a wise look. “Girls have more underwear that they have to deal with than boys. Did you know that?”

Mulder nearly chokes. “I, uh, thanks for telling me, Em.”

Scully can’t remember if he even had a pretense for his visit this time; if he did, she clearly hadn’t cared enough to pay it much attention. If he hadn’t come over on his own, Emily probably would have tried to provide an equally flimsy excuse for why he had to see her new dress _right now_. And Scully tries not to wonder, again, how it is that she and Mulder insist on needing excuses for something that they all want.

“My hair,” says Emily with a frown, after spinning around several times to twirl the skirt, scurrying into the bathroom to look at herself in the mirror, and scrambling back into the living room where Scully and Mulder are seated on the couch (maybe just a little too close together for platonic friends, but they’re both enjoying the proximity and pretending not to notice).

“What about it, sweetie?”

“It needs to be fancy,” declares Emily.

“It looks pretty the way it is now, Emily,” Scully tries to reassure. And then mentally berates herself for being the one to bring up “pretty” this time.

“But it needs to be fancy for a picture. It’s an _occasion_. Can you braid it?” And Scully has to smile over Emily’s adoption of her own descriptor ( _“a special occasion,”_ she had said), even as she realizes that her answer to Emily’s question is likely to be no.

Scully is not good at braiding hair. She had been a tomboy growing up, favors short, practical styles in her daily life, and had been blessed with an older sister who had more facility with the feminine wiles. Whenever she had needed makeup or hair to impress, she had always turned to Missy. Later, when living away from her sister, she had relied on dormmates or more fashionable female friends.

Feminine wiles haven’t really been on her radar in a number of years.

She feels a pang of missing her sister. “I can try, Emily, and you can see if you like it. I’m not very good at braiding—my sister always did my hair for me.”

“Older sibling’s responsibility,” proclaims Mulder wisely, leaning forward on the couch until his elbows are on his knees. He turns to Emily as if he is bestowing a grand secret, “I could braid it, if you’d like.”

Emily gives him a suspicious look. She scrunches her nose at him and giggles a little. “But you’re a _boy_.”

He holds up a finger, as if he has an unassailable counter to this argument. “Ah, but I was an older sibling. I braided my sister’s hair for her, sometimes.” Scully watches him out of the corner of her eye. She hadn’t known this about him, and though it is a small thing, it fills in another little piece of Mulder for her; she imagines him again as a brother—teasing and maddening, but also protective and loving.

Emily regards him for a moment longer, then twirls around to dash back to the bathroom and emerges with a brush and elastic, which she pushes at him, and then turns around so he can work on the back of her head.

He isn’t terribly fast at it. “Been awhile since I’ve done this,” he murmurs, working with deliberate concentration. Scully is slightly enraptured by the focused look on his face—she has seen it before, applied to various things (case files, baseball statistics, an article about paranormal phenomena, lights in the sky, evidence she warned him not to put in his mouth, the expression of someone he is trying to read, her own expression), but never her daughter’s hair.

“Does it make you sad?” asks Emily.

“Hmm?”

“Since you did it for your sister. I don’t want to make you sad.”

Mulder is quiet for a bit, still concentrating. Then, “Sometimes thinking about my sister does make me sad. But being able to do for you what I remember doing for her—that makes me happy.” He secures her hair with the elastic, and turns her around by the shoulders until she is facing him. “There. Go look.”

A French braid, impressively neat. Simple, but neat.

Emily scrambles off to the bathroom, then yells excitedly back to the living room. “It looks good!”

“See? I told you. Older sibling’s job,” Mulder calls back, his tone considerably more sedate.

 _Or a father’s_. Scully glances at him out of the corner of her eye and tries to keep the wistfulness from her thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am not the most fashionable person, myself, but I *did* have a dress like the one Emily's wearing here, in the mid '90s or so. (And my sister and I were similarly *super* excited to learn about slips.)


	2. 2004

They’ve had close calls before. But this is the worst one they’ve had in years, and it gets under their skin, makes them both feel hollow and fragile in a way they remember far too well.

“What would you have done?” she asks him, as they’re lying in bed two weeks later. “If you _had_ lost me?”

He tightens his grip on her. “Scully, don’t ask me that. Please.”

“Because you could,” she presses. “It’s always a possibility. Just like I could lose you. Nothing is guaranteed.”

He buries his face in her hair and makes an unhappy, noncommittal noise.

“Mulder, you have two children. You can’t just shut down.”

“And I won’t. I promise you that. But, just...don’t ask me to contemplate life without you. I did enough of that recently.”

She knows he did. Skinner had told her as much, although not in so many words. She frowns to herself and tries to work out how to articulate something that’s been bothering her for awhile now.

What she actually manages to say is, “You need to be Emily’s father.” And she feels his flinch: an involuntary reaction that he’d likely try to hide, but with the way he’s currently engulfing her, there’s no way she can miss the sudden tightness that shoots through him.

She scrambles to turn over in his arms, to face him, because _that is not what I meant at all; oh my God, Dana, how did you manage to make it sound like that_?

“I meant legally,” she manages to get out. “ _Legally_ , Mulder. You already are—I mean...” She huffs out a breath and tries to regather her thoughts, compose herself. His neck is suddenly far more interesting than his eyes.

She forges ahead, still staring at his neck. “You are William’s father, legally; you’re on the birth certificate, and no one is ever going to doubt that or challenge it. You’re just as much Emily’s father, but the only legal thing connecting you to her is the guardianship provision in my will and the settlement of your estate on _me and my heirs_ in yours.

“We’re so central to each other’s lives, Mulder, but we have nothing to connect us—not in the eyes of the world, not legally. And I’d be OK with that if it was just you and me, but it isn’t. If something happens, I don’t want to leave our children without an accurate, legal representation of our family.”

“Scully...” and there’s an edge of wonder in his voice, but also of humor. “Scully, did you just ask me to marry you for _legal reasons_?”

And curse her fair complexion—she’s sure she’s flaming red all the way down to her chest—and curse him for making it sound so ridiculous. “Yes?” seems to be the only thing that she can get her vocal cords to say.

He tilts her chin up so that she’s looking in his eyes, again, instead of at his neck. And there’s definitely humor there, but also wonder, and a vast pool of warmth. “Yes,” is the only thing he says.

* * *

He does have a ring; he gives it to her the next morning before she goes to work and before the children are up. 

He runs his finger over it briefly, where it rests on her hand. “The stones were my mother’s, but they’re in a new setting; I thought you’d appreciate something a little more modern and less ornate. And it has a low profile so it shouldn’t catch on things.”

When he bothers to, Mulder really can have excellent taste. She refrains from asking him just _when_ he had this done, or how long he was intending to hold onto it; he would most likely deflect the question with something flippant.

She does kiss him quite thoroughly. Just in case he’s still harboring any doubts that this is what she wants.

* * *

Emily is far too excited about the whole thing.

Scully had pondered, for just a few snatches of time at work on that first day, how she and Mulder were going to tell Emily about this development, and _what_ they were going to tell her. The pondering turned out to be unnecessary because Emily zeroed in on her ring almost as soon as she had hugged her at the door, and proceeded to get very, very excited. She had squealed, hugged her mother again, ran to hug Mulder, and scrambled off to find Will, who was playing with blocks spread over the living room floor.

Will had watched her throughout her excited declaration, said, “OK,” and then began to tell his big sister all about the robot he was building.

“Will, you have no appreciation for the important things in life,” Emily had huffed.

To be fair to Will, his mother and father have never been anything but together for as long as he has been alive, and he doesn’t really yet grasp the distinction between married and unmarried. Three years old is perhaps still too young to appreciate the overall unconventionality of his parents.

Whatever Will lacks in enthusiasm, Emily more than compensates for it. She nabs catalogues to pore over, searches out wedding sites on the web. She spends a great deal of time looking at possible dresses, for both herself and for her mother. And even though Scully has outlined the parameters of this particular wedding to Emily, she is starting to worry that a small, reserved civil ceremony is going to disappoint her daughter. She is also starting to worry about the prominence to which dresses, jewelry, makeup, and flowers have been elevated in her daughter’s interest.

“I think it’s relatively normal behavior for a girl her age,” Mulder tells her, as she frets over it.

“That’s just it, Mulder. A _girl_. I don’t want her to be socialized into thinking this should be her ultimate life goal, or that the event itself is the important part.”

“You do an excellent job of modeling a woman with different priorities.” He kisses her forehead. “It’s an event, Scully. Let her be excited.”

* * *

Monica babysits one day, which Scully takes off of work, and which she and Mulder spend on legal paperwork. They tell Emily and Will that it’s the boring, legal part of wedding preparations, which is mostly true. It doesn’t take that long to get a marriage license in Virginia, but stepparent adoption petitions take longer, and the intricacies of Mulder’s estate take longer still.

“I’m sure Ann is thrilled,” Mulder mumbles, of his lawyer—or, more accurately, the estate’s lawyer—as they’re sitting in a meeting room at the courthouse. He’s fidgeting, and he sounds distinctly _un_ thrilled. “She’s been trying to get me to do this shit for years.”

Leaving Monica and Emily together for the afternoon and evening proves to be a mistake, at least as measured in terms of curtailing wedding enthusiasm. Monica is apparently delighted to discuss wedding traditions and superstitions right along with dresses and flowers.

“Aunt Monica says finding a spider on your wedding dress would be lucky, but I don’t think it would be lucky for the spider.”

Upon their return home, Scully had been corralled onto the sofa by Emily, where she is now sitting between her daughter and Monica. Mulder had melted away to put Will to bed. She can’t decide whether that was thoughtful of him or cowardly.

Emily has pulled one of her catalogues into her lap, quickly flipping through dog-eared pages to try to find the right one.

“I think you should wear something like this,” she says, seriously. The dress is beautiful, to be sure, with the long train and elaborate, silver beading on the bodice. It is also not at all to Scully’s own taste, much less something she can wear into a courthouse.

It’s also white. Which is the traditional color for weddings now, of course, but it’s also a _complicated_ color. There are implications of sexual purity that she neither wants to make for herself, nor wants her daughter to feel culturally-pressured into making. She scrambles to find a short, age-appropriate way to describe her misgivings.

It’s Monica who saves her. “I don’t know if this is a dress that your mom would be comfortable in, Emily. And, after all, she’s the one getting married. But I bet, if we look hard enough together, we can find something that she’ll be comfortable in that will look just as pretty.”

Emily creases her forehead in concern. Despite her tremendous excitement, she takes all of this very seriously. “OK, but we need to make sure that it’s good enough. You should look like a _princess_ , Mom! You need to be the most beautiful lady in the room.”

“I always think so, regardless of what she’s wearing,” offers Mulder, somehow materializing from Will’s bedroom and leaning over the back of the sofa to inspect what they’re doing. He kisses Scully on the side of the head.

It’s a fairly easy point to score (Mulder would call it a layup), but Emily nearly swoons. Monica smirks.

It only occurs to Scully later that she has been more or less drafted into going wedding dress shopping with Monica and Emily.

* * *

It takes some searching and three total outings (two are abbreviated evening affairs and one is an all-day Saturday marathon), but Emily, Monica, and Scully do manage to find a dress that Emily approves of and her mother feels comfortable wearing.

On the way home from the store, Monica straightens the white plastic covering it seriously. “This needs to stay in place,” she intones. “Mulder shouldn’t see it before the ceremony. It’d be bad luck.”

And, of course, since she says it with Emily in the car, there is no doubt that compliance with this instruction will be closely monitored.

Emily goes out with her grandmother separately to find her own dress. It only takes a single Wednesday afternoon (an early release day for students). Emily has already had a lot of time to think about this dress, and she has dreamily discussed the pros and cons of various styles exhaustively with her friends.

All of Emily’s friends have declared the wedding the _most romantic thing_ , and Scully mentally congratulates herself for not dwelling on what the parents of those friends might think about her daughter’s repeated, happy declarations that her parents are getting married.

* * *

The night before, Mulder winds up getting abducted by a roving band of Gunmen in a shady-looking, battered, old van.

“Come on—bad luck to see the bride before the wedding,” says Frohike, matter-of-factly, as the three of them push and pull him out the door.

“But I _live_ here!” protests Mulder, as he’s bundled into the van.

“We’ll get stuff for you,” reassures Langly, holding up a very battered-looking suitcase and striding back into the house.

“ _You_ get the stuff,” Mulder directs Byers, apparently resigned to his capture, but astutely determining that Byers has the highest likelihood of collecting everything necessary to groom and dress for a wedding.

It turns out to have been Emily’s idea (aided and abetted by Monica), which explains why it sounds like something that a nine-and-a-half year old would come up with; it explains less how four adults also managed to think it was a good idea.

“Go into politics, Em,” Mulder tells her when they discuss it about a month later. “You’d be unstoppable.”

* * *

Monica does Scully's makeup and hair in the morning. Nothing too elaborate—nothing that will make her feel unlike herself. As her friend floats around her head with a curling iron, she once again remembers Melissa. This would have been her job, and she would have taken as much satisfaction in it as Monica seems to.

She feels herself get a little teary. Monica catches her eye in the mirror.

“What?”

“It’s nothing, just... You remind me so much of my sister sometimes.”

Monica smiles. “You’ve said that before. I think your sister is still here, in a way. Her energy is seeking you out, watching over you, and showing you her love through me.”

Missy would’ve believed it.

Monica finishes with her makeup, and adds the finishing touches to her hair, pinning a white gardenia behind her ear. The gardenia is Scully’s concession to Emily’s desire for flowers, and she has to admit that it does look rather lovely.

Emily, herself, is decked out in flowers, at least embroidered ones: her white knee-length dress is adorned with royal blue flowers and a royal blue ribbon for a sash.

Scully’s dress is silk chiffon and light blue: soft and filmy, and not what she would normally favor. But it’s lovely, not ostentatious, and she will not stand out too terribly in a courthouse, for which she is grateful.

She needs help getting into it—her mother helps her fasten the delicate buttons running up the back. It’s a beautiful closure, and it provides an intimate moment for mother and daughter, almost traditional, in spite of the simple, nontraditional ceremony and the fiercely independent bride.

She is also going to need help taking it off, which her mother politely pretends not to realize.

* * *

The look on Mulder’s face when he finally sees her enter the dingy courthouse lobby, the awe and surprise and nervousness and love, is worth all the prodding and fuss and machinations from both Emily and Monica. She wouldn’t have spent so much time and energy on finding the perfect dress (and on keeping him from seeing it) if left to her own devices, but she can’t deny the advantages now.

The look on his face when he takes it off, the warmth of his slightly-trembling fingers working the buttons, is quite another thing altogether.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Me, to myself: "I don't actually think Mulder and Scully *need* to get married. I think they're fine being...whatever they're happy being."
> 
> Also me: *Writes two wedding-adjacent stories in a row*


	3. 2012

It has been...many years since Dana Scully’s ill-fated senior prom, which, at the time, she had anticipated to be the romantic highlight of her life. Romance, alas, that had been disastrously interrupted by the fire department. She looks back on the youthful fumbling fondly now, though it had seemed traumatic at the time. It was thankfully not the romantic highlight of her life, nor would it have been even if things had gone smoothly.

She remembers, however, its significance in her mind, even as her rational and skeptical self was trying to temper her expectations, chiding her to be sensible and dignified about the whole thing.

She is chiding herself in the same way as she watches her daughter prepare for her own prom, with her own expectations and trepidations and excitement.

* * *

“English Romance” proclaims the prom ticket, printed with Big Ben, a Ferris wheel, and a picturesque cobblestone street. Mulder stares down at it, where Emily had tossed it on the kitchen counter with her keys and purse. He’s frowning a bit, twitching his mouth.

Scully sidles up to him. “Feeling nostalgic?”

He startles, winces. “Not so much, no. That didn’t turn out terribly well for me. I mean, there were a few that... Well. The dominant romantic impression from that period remains the unforgettable Miss Green.” A grimace. “Unfortunately.”

“Well, maybe you could help Emily with the authenticity of her dress.”

Mulder turns to look at her in disbelief. When she smirks at him, he gives her a half-smile back.

“Right, Scully. No one gives better female fashion advice than your old and out-of-touch father, pulling from tales of his long-departed prime thirty years ago.”

“Oh, I think you’ve still got some prime left in you.” She looks at him through her eyelashes, flirting shamelessly. One of the advantages of age is the discovery that shame is overrated.

He leans down, imparts a secret. “Shhh. Don’t tell the kids. They’d never get over it.”

She pulls him down the rest of the way, until Will stomps loudly enough into the kitchen to give them a clear warning to pull apart (and make it clear this is a second entry). He’ll get over it.

* * *

For all the grief she gave her parents about the protracted progression of their joint love life, Emily has so far been remarkably reserved in sharing anything about her own romantic inclinations.

“Maybe she’s afraid that we’ll get revenge on her,” posits Mulder.

It eventually emerges, with a studied nonchalance, that she is going to prom with a boy named Marcus, whose name they have heard occasionally sprinkled around in the stories of her high school life. Scully had harbored some suspicions about her daughter’s attachment to him over the years, and she isn’t surprised to hear the name.

They’re thoughtfully, maturely circumspect with Emily’s feelings when she tells them, nodding gravely and not pressing for confidences or making conjectures. This restraint does not extend to their bedroom when they’re preparing for bed that night.

“You know, my prom date was named Marcus, too,” she says, emerging from the bathroom after drying her face.

“If it’s the same Marcus, I’ll shoot him. One man does _not_ need to put the moves on both my wife and my daughter. I don’t care how smooth he is.”

“My prom date is my age, Mulder. Emily’s prom date is a high school boy.”

“You don’t know that your Marcus aged normally, though. Maybe he’s a vampire that only looks like a teenager—you know, like the boy in that _Twilight_ book who’s actually a hundred years old, but still likes to date teenagers.”

“Well, tell you what, Mulder. If it’s the same Marcus, _I’ll_ shoot him.”

“Do you always shoot the boys you like, Scully?”

This has gone far enough. She tosses a pillow at him.

* * *

For Emily, however, prom seems to be less about romance than the pleasure of preparing for an event with her friends. She has always loved this sort of preparation: meticulously gathering resources (now mostly via the internet), browsing for ideas, jotting them down in a section of the notebook she always carries with her, dissecting them with her friends via text.

She’s busy these days, of course: Paper deadlines are looming; she has AP tests coming up; finals and graduation will be in two months; freshman orientation will interrupt the summer, and she’ll be moving into a dorm to begin college at UVA in a scant five months.

She makes time, though, for old hobbies: sketches dress ideas and miscellaneous thoughts in the margins of her math and English notes.

But even the familiar has shifted and evolved over the years. Emily has long grown out of asking her mother’s assistance with finding dresses. She relies on the internet and her friends and sometimes on Monica (who has retained the role of Cool Aunt). Scully finds herself unexpectedly nostalgic for the days when her own style had been emulated by Emily, when she had been the primary source of her daughter’s knowledge of feminine dress. She surprises herself by fretting to Monica, privately, about hemlines, necklines, and the amount of exposed skin in styles popular with modern teenagers.

“I’ve become my mother,” she laments to Mulder, later.

He looks up from where he had been nipping at her collarbone. “Maggie is a fine woman, Scully. But...you could’ve had better timing for that declaration.”

* * *

On the Saturday morning of prom, Emily begins her final preparations. She goes to get her hair and makeup done and comes back looking a bit self-conscious, but pleased: hair piled in curls on top of her head, features carefully enhanced. She sits on the couch in her sweatshirt and jeans and clearly tries to quell her nerves by reading.

Her brother does not help: William flits around the living room with apparent goal of antagonizing her a bit, declares the whole prom thing to be gross and ridiculous.

Emily retorts that _he_ is gross and ridiculous.

In the late afternoon she goes upstairs to change and comes back in a tea length dress: floral-patterned, very light pink lace. There’s a gentle tug at Scully’s heart to see her daughter like this—looking so grown up (still a little unsure in this unfamiliar presentation, but trying not to show it). It doesn’t seem so long ago, looking back, when Emily was clinging to her hand, asking her for a pretty dress, rejoicing in slips, having Mulder braid her hair so it would be fancy.

Emily is embarrassed to see her parents looking at her with such emotion—Scully can tell by the way she averts her own eyes. But underneath the embarrassment, she’s obviously pleased by their pride.

* * *

Mulder puts the finishing touches on the small selection of appetizers arraying the kitchen table, hunts through the cabinets to find enough glasses for drinks. The small gathering of adults come to see Emily off to dinner with Marcus had been his idea; Emily had scoffed a little when he brought it up, but granted her permission with the peculiar kind of resigned sigh that indicated the idea actually pleased her.

Scully feels a bit untethered: Emily has handled all of her own preparations herself, and Mulder has done all the event planning. She suspects that he had taken this on, in part, to distract himself from the reality of seeing their daughter so grown up and the looming knowledge that she will soon be living on her own.

Mulder still does most of his work from home: research, writing, occasional consulting. He’s gradually accepted more work as the children have gotten older and more self-sufficient. The rare consulting case now is bad enough to drive him to attempt to shield his family from it: to shut the office door and stay there unless he’s needed. It’s characteristic of him, but Scully refuses to let him stay isolated, keeps forcing him out, reminds him of the worthier parts of the world.

Sometimes it’s his children who remind him: “Hey Dad, remember that Will and I made dinner tonight. You’re parentally obligated to eat it and tell us how good it was.”

Watching him fumble through party hosting duties now, she reflects that he is a far better parent than homemaker; the former makes him happy, the latter is a necessary bother. The house is always something of an organized mess. And he’s clearly managed to shrink the t-shirt he’s wearing, and apparently doesn’t have another clean one to wear. Not that it looks _bad_ on him—he’s still very well-built, and she enjoys the view furtively until she notices that Monica is smirking at her.

Tearing her gaze away from her partner, she scans the room to watch the other attendees. Will has deigned to make an appearance, though he is sitting in a corner in order to signify aloofness. John, sitting next to him, is now being treated to a discourse on Pokémon. Scully can tell that he doesn’t fully follow most of the details, but he’s making a game effort to try—making a game effort to try to understand the completely incomprehensible is one of the defining characteristics of John Doggett.

Over by the kitchen table, her mother is talking to Walter Skinner. They are, embarrassingly enough, swapping incriminating stories about her. She marvels that they’ve both been invited to the same event and vows that it will never happen again.

Come to think of it, she’s not sure how it is that they’re both at _this_ event; they don’t generally run in the same circles of acquaintance. And this particular event is mostly women—Scully can concede that the ritual of admiring lovely dresses and earrings and makeup and hair is predominantly a feminine one.

In fact, the guest list (relatively small) is _all_ women. Except, for some reason, John Doggett and Walter Skinner. Neither of whom generally display much enthusiasm for dresses and earrings and makeup and hair. And, of course, there’s Mulder himself, wearing a shirt that is just a little too tight.

Wait.

* * *

“Mulder?” she asks that evening, after the guests have gone and Will is in bed. Her voice is ostensibly light, but he obviously recognizes the tone, and his shoulders bunch a little. It’s easy to track the movement of his muscles under that shirt.

He turns to look at her with a deadpan that would be credible if she didn’t know him well enough to read the slightly-apprehensive look in his eye.

“What were your guest list selection criteria for tonight?”

He shrugs. “I didn’t carefully map it out or anything. Just people who love Emily.”

“You just... _happened_ to invite all women, except the two men who _happen_ to be the ex-Marines of our acquaintance?”

“They love Emily, too.”

It’s very sly. She gives him credit for subtlety. It surprises her a little—Mulder is brilliant, but she’s never considered him subtle. She gives his shirt a pointed, appraising look. “You are not the guardian of your daughter’s virtue, Mulder,” she reminds him.

“I know _that_ ,” he defends himself, sounding stung. “I never would set myself up that way, but Scully, I _was_ a teenage boy. And if he hurts her—”

“You will respond like the intelligent, supportive man you matured into and handle the situation in the way that is the best for her,” retorts Scully in a tone that brooks no arguments.

* * *

Emily returns home safely, and drifts upstairs in a happy, dreamy haze to go to bed.


	4. 2018

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, hey, is everyone still alive? If you didn't like the finale's version of 2018, you can have this one instead.

The topic of wedding dresses occupies the beginning of 2018.

Emily, biting her lip, had approached her mother with the desire to be married in her grandmother’s wedding gown. They had lost Maggie Scully a few years ago, and Scully knows that this is Emily’s way of honoring her grandmother, of keeping memory close, of remembering her past on a day dedicated to her future.

Emily does want to do some alterations—both for fit and to slightly update the style. This desire puts Scully in direct conflict with Bill. She argues her daughter’s case over the phone from behind her closed bedroom door. (She will never let Emily know, but she does wonder, afterward, if her voice had gotten loud enough for Will to overhear, wonders if he will tell Emily.)

“You want to what, keep it tucked away in moth balls and careful preservation? Why? What do you hope to gain from that? From hoarding a museum of the past that you’re the only one who gets to appreciate? That’s how things _die_ , Bill: tucked away and unused. Change is _vital_.”

She does win—Bill eventually relents (though grudgingly and gracelessly; their family trait is not capitulating easily). She hangs up and stares at the darkened phone in her lap. Mulder, sitting silently behind her on the bed, rubs her back a bit.

“I can understand the mixed feelings over Mom’s dress. I _do_ understand them,” she says, finally, softly. “But I don’t trust _why_ he has them.”

Mulder sighs, caresses up her back to her shoulders. “Well, if it’s Grace he doesn’t approve of, she’s in solid company, if I do say it myself. Although I’d have thought he might actually appreciate the good Christian woman after the divorced Jewish atheist.”

She gives a little snort of acknowledgement, but is otherwise silent.

“You’re ambivalent about this, too, aren’t you?” he murmurs, eventually. Then clarifies, “The dress, not Grace.”

“Yes,” she admits. “But Emily wants to wear it, and it’s important to her, and she has every right to do it. There’s absolutely no rational reason to deny her.”

He chuckles a bit and shifts behind her until she is leaning back on his chest. “That’s my Scully.”

* * *

She and Monica go with Emily to the seamstress for the final fitting. They sit in overly plush, purple chairs in a room dominated by the angled, 360-degree mirrors in the center. A changing screen painted with roses sits off to the side.

“What do you think?” asks Emily, coming around the screen and peering nervously at Scully and Monica.

“You look like a _princess_ ,” says Monica, with a bright grin.

Scully fights back the tears that spring to her eyes when she hugs her daughter in her mother’s dress, holds the past, present, and future at once in her arms.

Monica has taken up the cause of weddings again with a delighted verve. “You missed your callin’,” John says with a small, fond shake of his head. “Shoulda been a wedding planner instead of one of the people who investigates things that go bump in the night.”

“I plan weddings for the other people who investigate things that go bump in the night,” retorts Monica. “And their offspring.”

* * *

One evening a few days before the wedding, Scully, Mulder, and Will check in at the hotel, the first arrivals to the block of rooms reserved for guests.

“Let’s plan to convene for dinner in an hour,” Scully tells Will, as he shuffles into the room next to theirs. He responds with an affirmative grunt and disappears behind his door.

“Do you think we should’ve gotten connecting rooms?” she mutters to Mulder, peering a little anxiously at the adjoining wall, as if she could will a door to appear with her gaze.

“Well, _I_ would rather have the privacy, and there’s only so much trouble he can get into in there by himself. Besides, I imagine that we’ll all have enough to do over the next three days to occupy our time, anyway.”

Will had not brought a date, following an uncomfortable scenario involving two girls (each unaware of and distraught by the existence of the other) and the discovery of an unfortunate book. The whole thing had resulted in grounding and restriction of internet and phone privileges, accompanied by a thorough lecture from Mulder, who is better at such lectures because he possesses an almost preternatural immunity to the teenage tactic of trying to embarrass him into disengaging.

She hadn’t been privy to the whole conversation, but she _had_ heard part of it, surreptitiously walking by the door to Will’s room to check on things: “I am _not_ telling you to live in virginal chastity—I am telling you to treat yourself and whomever you’re with with a modicum of respect.” That seemed to indicate that Mulder had a decent handle on things, so she had moved on down the hallway.

“ _The Pickup Artist_ , really?” Mulder had lamented later, in the safety of their own bedroom. “I wish it was porn. I’d know what to do with porn.”

“I bet you would,” she retorted with a smirk she couldn’t stop, despite the overall seriousness of the situation.

“Shut up, Scully.”

She had cornered Will into a completely separate, nonjudgmental, and medically-detached refresher on safe sex later. She never mentioned the connection to Mulder’s lecture, but William was a smart boy. Most of the time.

It’s a longstanding parenting policy of theirs that she and Mulder don’t share the particulars of one sibling’s misdeeds with the other, so if Emily knows any details, she’s gotten them from Will. And it does seem like she knows at least a part of the story because, when they meet her for breakfast the morning after their arrival, she hugs them each in turn, murmuring greetings: “Mom. Mulder. You’re an idiot, Will.”

* * *

The rehearsal runs fairly smoothly, all of them milling around the gardens near dusk. The warmth of summer is creeping up, and though the day had been wet, the rain had cleared by evening. The clouds have parted, and they can see the sun sinking to the horizon; the scent of rain-soaked blossoms is heavy on the air.

The trumpet player cracks one of the notes on the Voluntary. Emily giggles from where she’s standing between her parents at the beginning of the aisle. “If you do that tomorrow, Dan, I won’t come out,” she calls.

Dan makes a face at her, and Scully marvels at the life her daughter has carved out for herself: She has good friends, a job, her own place to call home, a fiancée—soon a wife.

“Don’t worry, Dan,” calls Mulder cheerfully. “Scully and I have got a lot of experience in escorting the unwilling.” He gives Emily’s arm a tug, makes as though he’s going to drag her out. She gives a little squeak and grabs at Scully’s arm on her other side to steady herself.

Scully can see Will, from his position near the improvised altar where he had preceded them as Emily’s honor attendant, shake his head in mortification at the ebullient weirdness displayed by his family.

The processional is a bit unusual for a Christian wedding. It is, in fact, traditionally Jewish: Each bride will be escorted by both her parents and preceded by her attendants.

“We’re mixing and matching traditions,” Emily had explained, easily.

“Well, I hope you’re not counting on me to say a blessing; my Hebrew is _terrible_ ,” returned Mulder with a small smirk, but Scully could tell that he was touched, nevertheless. She was (and is) touched, herself; this particular borrowed tradition gives mothers the opportunity to accompany their children up the aisle, too.

An Episcopalian priest from the church that Emily and Grace attend is officiating. Scully and Mulder deposit Emily at the altar and fade back into front-row chairs to listen to the priest prepare their daughter and her fiancée for the ceremony.

* * *

In the morning, they dress in the clothing that Emily had picked out.

“How did she get to have such refined taste?” wonders Mulder, peering into the mirror in their hotel room. “It wasn’t our influence, I’m almost positive.”

“Speak for yourself,” retorts Scully.

“You know, for all the shit you give me about my ’90s fashion foibles, _I_ never showed up to the office covered in loud plaid.”

She remains dignified and silent, simply turns so he can zip the back of her dress and fasten the eyehook at the top. He squints and fumbles a little. “Need my glasses for these now,” he mumbles.

She ties his tie for him. Mulder is fully capable of tying his own tie, but he claims that, since she’s a sailor’s daughter, her knots are better. She suspects that he mostly just enjoys the attention.

She is once again wearing blue silk chiffon, although in a darker shade, with sleeker lines. Mulder is in a dark blue suit and white shirt; his tie and pocket square are subtly patterned, and the accent color matches Scully’s dress. She looks at their reflection as they stand side-by-side, and admires the elegance of their reflection in the mirror.

“We’ve still got it goin’ on,” offers Mulder, and she thinks he might be right.

* * *

Scully and Monica help Emily with her final dressing preparations. She’s wearing her grandmother’s wedding dress, the cross necklace given to her long ago by her mother (given to Scully by her own parents longer ago), and the pearl bracelet that had been a _bat mitzvah_ heirloom in Mulder’s family (that he had given to Emily when she turned thirteen). Her hairpin is also from Mulder’s family, and the ring she is giving Grace had belonged to his grandmother, although it hasn’t been a wedding ring before. 

When Emily had asked him if he had any meaningful jewelry she might give to her wife, Mulder had remained silent for a moment, then got up and returned with a box that normally stayed quietly tucked in a corner of the master bedroom closet. “Use or keep whatever you like,” he told her, with a wave of his hand, “There’s a lot of it, and I feel strange about recycling most of it with your mom.”

Emily isn’t carrying a bouquet, but the gardens are beautiful today; there are flowers everywhere. A white gardenia adorns her hair.

Emily’s friend Ashley pokes her head in. “We’re getting going, Em.” Emily smiles and gathers up her skirts.

* * *

“You ready, Em?” asks Mulder, in a low voice, from his position on the other side of Emily. Their daughter looks a little nervous, but she takes a deep breath, smiles and nods. She holds out each of her hands, grasps theirs, linking their fingers together as if she were still a little girl. Scully squeezes reassuringly, an old and familiar gesture on the cusp of a new adventure.

She remembers their first time walking together like this, the three of them. It was twenty years ago, 1998; Mulder was almost bashful, and Emily had unaffectedly grabbed both of their hands and traipsed happily along between them, chattering animatedly.

The Voluntary begins (Dan hits all of his notes). The three of them step out together into sunlight.

Grace had gone first, with her parents, and Scully can see, from where she waits at the end of the makeshift aisle, when she first gets a glimpse of Emily.

She remembers that look, the look in Mulder’s eyes in the lobby of a dusty courthouse in Virginia, and she catches an answering look from Emily, from the corner of her eye. The look that Scully herself had worn in that same courthouse.

She feels vital and alive.

* * *

Parents of the brides are expected to dance. Scully wishes her daughter hadn’t been so excited about programming the dancing, because she had felt unable to disappoint her by refusing. She is a competent enough social dancer, but not always an easy one with an audience. She grips Mulder’s hand and arm tightly and follows him carefully to “The Best is Yet to Come.” At least it isn’t Cher. She has a very distinct, personal soft spot for “Walking in Memphis,” actually, but she’d rather not let all of Emily’s friends and family and new in-laws know about it.

(“What was your first dance to?” Emily had asked. And even though Emily was a grown woman now, Scully could still hear the excited, romance-loving girl that she had once been. She was practically vibrating with energy in a way that reminded Scully very much of Mulder.

“Um, there wasn’t dancing at our wedding, sweetie,” Scully hedged.

“Yeah, Mom, I remember _that_ ,” huffed Emily. She had been disappointed about that when she was a girl. “But I know you must’ve danced with Mulder at some point. What song was playing the first time?”

“Umm,” muttered Scully, wondering just how she would get out of this one. Mulder, walking by the living room, unhelpfully burst out laughing.)

“Scully, it’s only me—relax; I’ve got you.” Mulder is a graceful and uninhibited dancer. This talent of his is quite wasted on her.

He apparently doesn’t think so. He holds onto her, keeps her on the dance floor as Ella Fitzgerald fades into “Unchained Melody,” and the gentle foxtrot becomes rhythmic swaying. He hums along to the music, and he seems happy enough that she lets herself relax, just a little, and leans into his chest with her arms slung around his neck.

Later, she stands a little apart from the reception crowd, leaning on a column, watching the dancers. Emily and Will dance with each other. Will has finally attained his father’s height, is finally taller than Emily. Mulder and Emily dance two songs together, and Scully can almost see all the times they’ve done this before, a time-lapse overlay of Mulder teaching Emily to dance. He leads the first song, and she leads the second, just like they used to practice, gliding around together. He kisses her forehead at the end of the set and leaves her to dance with Grace.

Will is now dancing with a girl who looks around his age. Mulder hovers inconspicuously within earshot (he did used to work for the FBI) until he is apparently satisfied with the nature of their interactions. He had warned Will about his behavior with women during this wedding.

“If I catch you trying any of those manipulation techniques, I will cut in on you, and I will do it in the most embarrassing way for you imaginable.”

This was not an idle threat, and Will had glared, but at least he seems to have either taken the warning or the lecture to heart. All subsequent interactions with women that have been subtly monitored by his parents have not been objectionable.

Now, Mulder slips quietly up behind her. He tugs her until she is leaning back against him, circles his arms around her waist.

" _Ani l'dodi, ve dodi li_ ," he murmurs into the top of her head. “I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.”

She tilts her head back, an upturned eyebrow accompanying her upturned gaze. Her scrutiny is met by Mulder’s upturned mouth.

“Well, I wouldn’t vouch for my pronunciation. But I’ve been to enough weddings to remember that part. Seems appropriate.”

It does.


End file.
